Hot Sauces Are Not Just Hot - Grab A Craft Sauce To Complement Your Next Meal

Jan. 3, 2013 - PRLog -- Hot sauce is taking over as the world's number one condiment. The ketchup bottle is seen less and less, and more gourmet sauces are atop the table. We're not talking about Tabasco, we're talking about hand-crafted sauces, as in Smoke Canyon's Smoke Roasted Jalapeño Sauce. As the overall winner of the Hot Sauce category in The Hot Pepper Awards 2012, this sauce not only adds heat, but unique and robust flavor, with its smoked and roasted ingredients using Missouri hardwoods.

The Ghost Pepper has become mainstream, but it's not all about the burn, as seen with Fat Cat's Surprisingly Mild Guajillo Ghost; a mild Ghost Pepper sauce that showcases the flavor of this famed pepper, and winner of the Superhots - Unique category.

Then we have the fiery stuff, like the tangy Benito's Old Coy Dog with carrot and lime, and JungleRain's PitBull, a balancing act of intense heat and fruit. Both winners as well.

So, you see, it's not always about the heat. You may hear hot sauce and think vinegar and peppers, or fire without flavor, but that's the old days. Now, it's all about heat and flavor, so if you haven't visited the hot sauce aisle lately, take a look and it may surprise you. To help you out, we've awarded the best products of 2012 (http://thehotpepper.com/topic/36629-the-hot-pepper-awards...), but most of these are not on your supermarket shelves, so be sure to check out their websites.

The Hot Pepper Awards is an annual competition, for more information please visit: http://thehotpepper.com/awards